BusinessTN

East Tennessee State University will get its own college of pharmacy the old-fashioned way—by earning it.

It has taken nearly two decades for the university’s president, Dr. Paul E. Stanton Jr., to convince everyone from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and Tennessee Board of Regents to the governor himself that ETSU has a strong enough case for its own school and the regional support to back it up without asking the state for a dime.

The university has received national recognition for its health care education curricula, with the James H. Quillen College of Medicine ranked as the third best school for rural medicine and highly respected nursing programs. Adding a pharmacy school will round out the rural health care model, attracting students interested in serving the underserved.

“This end of the state is not getting enough pharmacists,” Stanton says. “To have a college of pharmacy here would have as huge an economic impact as the medical school has had.”

By 2016, a freestanding college of pharmacy would bring upwards of $30 million per year and 250 new jobs to the Northeast Tennessee region, and pull in $100 million and 1,000 new jobs statewide, he adds.

While ETSU fought tooth and nail for its school, the University of Tennessee wanted to expand its well-established four-year program in Memphis onto other U.T. campuses across the state. An independent consultant hired by THEC recommended that the two universities partner on a joint curriculum that initially looked like a win-win situation, but ultimately appeared to be a case of splitting the baby.

Incoming pharmacy students would have spent the first year in Memphis, then could choose to transfer to ETSU in Johnson City to complete the program.

Stanton and his administration begrudgingly met with U.T. officials, but talks quickly reached an impasse in part because of logistics. Requiring students from Northeast Tennessee to move some eight hours away to Memphis for only nine months and then transfer back home was a hard pill to swallow.

Most of the pharmacists employed in the Tri-Cities are from out of state. In fact, there are about 25 pharmacy colleges that are closer to Bristol than the U.T. campus in Memphis.

Once news of the ETSU/U.T. saga spread through the local media, business and civic leaders got behind Stanton’s efforts until there was enough noise to garner Gov. Phil Bredesen’s attention.

Just weeks after an intense, one-on-one meeting between Bredesen and Stanton in March, the governor made a special trip east to announce that Tennessee is indeed big enough for two colleges of pharmacy and gave his blessing to ETSU—on the condition that Stanton raise $5 million in startup cash and another $2.5 million of buffer in the budget by June.

The checks started rolling in immediately as area donors made good on their promises, and as of April 29, ETSU had raised about $4.5 million for the pharmacy school.

Wellmont Health System, the management organization that oversees five major hospitals in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, recently pledged $500,000, and other corporate citizens like Eastman Chemical Co. in Kingsport and Abingdon, Va.-based K-VA-T Food Stores (Food City) also will contribute, although the amounts have not been made public.

“This was an example of a regional issue that went beyond the individual cities,” says Brian Ferguson, president of the Tri-Cities Economic Development Alliance and chairman and CEO of Eastman. “It was a place where our influence could potentially make a difference by expressing our support both emotionally and financially. It was a pretty easy call for us.”

ETSU hopes to reach, and even surpass, its fundraising target this month, begin accepting applications in July and enroll its first pharmacy class in Fall 2006.